The present invention relates to a card supplying mechanism and card supplying method for supplying cards to a main unit of a card issuing apparatus or a card printing apparatus. More particularly, the present invention relates to a card supplying mechanism and card supplying method adapted to the main unit for issuing and/or printing to many cards at one time.
Conventionally, to create card media, such as credit cards, cash cards, license cards, and ID cards, a thermal transfer type printing apparatus has been used for thermally transferring desired images and/or characters to cards via a thermal transfer film using a thermal transfer head. An example of a card printing apparatus that uses such a thermal transfer method is disclosed in Japanese Patent No. 3330355.
Recently, because of the increased need for issuing cards by printing large volumes of cards at a time, technologies have been developed for supplying to a card printing apparatus blank cards from a card supplying mechanism that holds high volumes of blank cards. Examples of these technologies are disclosed in Japanese Patent Publications (KOKAI) No. 2001-151352 and in No. 2001-331853.
Particularly, blank cards that are made of polyvinyl chloride (i.e., “PVC”) have a variety of uses. However, such cards have a tendency to stick together when the apparatus is employed in an environment having high humidity. Such an environment often prevents cards from separating in a gravity based method.
Therefore, an object of the present invention is to provide a card supplying mechanism that provides improved separation of cards, and that securely supplies cards by reducing a load acting on a bottommost card that is to be supplied.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a card supplying method that provides improved separation of cards, and that securely supplies cards by reducing a load acting on the bottommost card to be supplied.
Further objects and advantages of the present invention will be apparent from the following description of the invention.